Ayaan Hirsi Ali has written a remarkable book about her experiences
as a Somali Muslim woman in Kenya, Ethiopia, Saudi Arabia and the
Netherlands (ISBN-13 #978-0743289684, 2007, 368 pages).

Infidel is a remarkable book by a remarkable person. It's
unusual that someone less than 40 years old would have lived a life
worthy of an autobiography, but Ayaan Hirsi Ali certainly has. You might
not have heard or remembered her name, but you are likely aware of the
brutal murder of filmmaker Theo van Gogh in November 2004 at the hands
of a radical Muslim. Van Gogh produced an 11-minute documentary titled Submission about the inherent abuse of women in the Islamic faith.
We wrote of the murder and its implications in several articles in World News and Prophecy
starting in December 2004. After shooting his victim, then cutting his
throat nearly to decapitation, the assassin stabbed a note to van
Gogh's chest. The note was a fatwa-like assassination order against the
woman who wrote the screenplay—Ayaan Hirsi Ali.
Ali was, at the time, a member of the Dutch parliament. Little
publicized outside of Holland, subsequent events threw the tiny nation
into turmoil and eventually led Ali to write her
extraordinary autobiography.
She now lives in the United States, but she came to Holland from Kenya,
where she lived with her grandmother, mother and sister as refugees
from war-torn Somalia. The family also lived for a time in Saudi Arabia
and Ethiopia. She provides an insightful perception of the different
approaches to Islam in the indigenous cultures and tribes. Islam's oppression of women
Principally, Infidel is the story of Islam's effect upon
women, told from the point of view of Somalis, where female circumcision
is still practiced. Living in Saudi Arabia as a young girl in the
1970s, Ali also offers sharp insights into life as a woman under Islam
in the Wahhabi tradition. In Kenya, as a teen, she was drawn to the
radical Muslim Brotherhood, learning its violent philosophy from imams
sponsored by Egypt and Saudi Arabia. She experienced and witnessed the
routine beatings of women and children, as well as the facelessness of a
female in the Islamic culture.
Yet, she did not rebel against her culture for a long time, not until
her father arranged a marriage for her to a man she did not know and did
not want to marry. Arranged marriages were—are—the norms in Islam. Her
husband-to-be was Canadian, and while she was en route to Canada from
Kenya to marry him, she sought asylum in Holland. She assimilated into
the Dutch culture, as well as its politics, receiving a university
education and eventually being elected to parliament.
Throughout it all, she struggled with her Muslim training, testing its
assertions against what she witnessed in the West. She had been brought
up to believe that only an Islamic government could produce a harmonious
society, but she saw countries in Europe that were arguably
better-ordered, cleaner and healthier than any of the Muslim nations in
which she had lived. Moreover, the way the women of Europe were able to
live was a universe away from Muslim practice.
She struggled with the Islamic mentality toward its women, concluding
repeatedly that it did not fit the modern world. Even as a teen, she
dared to question her imams, seeking the “why” behind the Koranic rules.
As an adult, especially after moving to Holland, she openly debated
those willing to address her questions. She could not find the relevancy
within Islam that she believed the modern world requires. So she left
the faith.
However, she did not leave her passionate desire to see the way of life
for Muslim women improved. She grieved over the circumcision of young
Somali girls that she knew continued even in the immigrant Somali
communities of West. She had firsthand knowledge of it in Holland.
(Female circumcision isn't a tenet of Islam, but the imams don't forbid
it either. It's the remnant of an ignorant nomadic superstition.)
She describes as common throughout Islam the brutal subjugation of
women, including arranged marriages, beatings by their husbands and the
expectation that they will forever be quietly in the background of a
male-dominated culture.
It is doubtful that she will bring about any change within Islam.
Devout Muslims view her as a heretic; even her family cut off all
contact with her. Ibrahim Hooper, spokesman for the Council on
American-Islamic Relations, says Ali is “just another Muslim basher on
the lecture circuit” (Neely Tucker, “True Believer,” Washington Post, March 7, 2007, p. C01).
Armed body guards travel with Ali wherever she goes; they have ever since the murder of van Gogh. Three principal lessons
The book itself is excellent writing, moving quickly along through
dynamic and tragic stories. There are three outstanding points to draw
from it. The first is the insight into how shockingly different the
cultures of Somalia, Ethiopia, Saudi Arabia and Kenya are from the West.
Ali's grandmother literally lived in the Stone Age, married to a nomad
and surviving off the desert; she was forced into an arranged marriage
to an older man when she was 10 years old.
The second point springs from the first: That part of the world is
still largely conscious of tribes, clans and families. The book opens
with Ali's recitation of her ancestors, something that her grandmother
had her do repeatedly. Whenever one met a stranger, the first thing they
did was recite their family lines, usually to discover some common
ancestor. Clans automatically helped fellow clan members with food,
shelter or whatever else was needed.
When all else fails—as when Somalia overthrew its communist
government—people return to their tribal identity. Sadly, that country
exploded into intertribal warfare, propelling hundreds of thousands of
refugees over the borders of neighboring countries.
Clearly, any international policies regarding the Middle East must be
knowledgeable about tribal configurations, not merely national
boundaries. Failing to fully understand and plan around this reality has
frustrated the American-led coalition in Iraq.
The third point is the most important. It has to do with Ali's reaction
to the 9/11 terror assault on the United States. When she heard of the
attacks, her first reaction was, “Please don't let the attackers be
Muslims.” Her worst fears were confirmed when she learned that that the
terrorists were indeed Muslims. Ali bristled at the ignorance in
analyses that claimed the attacks sprang from Islamic frustrations about
Palestine, Israel or Western morals. Terrorist attacks “were about belief”
“It was about belief,” she wrote, bluntly. Articles “about Islam being a
religion of peace and tolerance, not the slightest bit violent…were
fairy tales, nothing to do with the real world I knew…People theorized
about poverty pushing people to terrorism; about colonialism and
consumerism, pop culture and Western decadence… None of this
pseudointellectualism had anything to do with reality” (p. 270).
Addressing the theory that American support for Israel and Arab
frustration over Palestinian issues motivated the attacks, Ali scoffed
that the attackers weren't Palestinian men. None left letters about
Palestine. “This was belief, I thought. Not frustration, colonialism, or
Israel: it was about a religious belief, a one-way ticket to
Heaven” (ibid.).
Questions, doubts and challenges she had mentally collected about Islam
now flooded Ali's mind. She wrote that she came to realize, “We froze
the moral outlook of billions of people into the mind-set of the Arab
desert in the seventh century” (p. 272).
She sees Islam as unwilling to bring the faith into the modern world.
Equally, she sees the West as unwilling to perceive Islam for what it
is. Commenting on a European Social Democrat Parties conference whose
attendees “seemed to think it would be easy to set up the institutions
for a European Islam in peace and harmony. They seemed clouded by
wishful thinking rather than operating with rigorous analysis” (p. 278).
She was commenting on the fact that European Islamic communities are
retaining their cultures, with their unacceptable and troublesome
components. They are not integrating into Europe's culture, and they are
retaining their deeply held religious convictions.
One of the changes she pushed for in Holland was the registration of
“honor killings”—murders of Islamic women by family members over acts
that they believe dishonored the family. Homicide statistics did not
reflect this category until Ali lobbied the justice minister to try a
pilot project in just two of the 25 regions in Holland. Monitoring honor
killings revealed 11 in only seven months!
Such murders occur by the multiple thousands throughout the Muslim
world, as well as within insular immigrant communities in Western
countries. “Honor killings occur for a variety of offenses, including
allegations of premarital or extramarital sex, refusing an arranged
marriage, attempting to obtain a divorce, or simply talking with a man.
If a woman brings shame to the family, her male relatives are bound by
duty and culture to kill her” (James Emery, “Reputation Is Everything:
Honor Killing Among the Palestinians,” www.worldandi.com, 2003).
The most explosive charge she leveled at Islam was in regard to the
“marriage” of the prophet Muhammad, then in his 50s, to a 9-year-old
girl. Ali pointed out to the Dutch authorities that he would be a
pedophile by modern legal standards. Her comparison was a firebomb to
devout Muslims.
You can understand why Ayaan Hirsi Ali has become a lightning rod for
controversy in today's world. Islam and its internal struggles—Shia vs.
Sunni, clan vs. clan, Wahhabism, radical terrorists, etc.—are all part
of the daily news. All are part of the considerations of international
politics, as well as global business. That reality makes Infidel worth reading.
As we have often observed in World News and Prophecy, the
fomenting conflict between Islam and traditional Western nations and
cultures is a natural fit to the end-time prophecies of a north-south
pitched battle for control of the Middle East. We recommend our booklet The Middle East in Bible Prophecy for a complete analysis of those prophecies, as well as for an overview of the history of Islam. WNP